The Bloody-Minded Heart
by Riandra
Summary: What if the Tell-Tale Heart just didn't stop when it was found? Imagine the uproar that would cause in Victorian London...


_'I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die!—and now— again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! **louder!**—_

_"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!" '_

~0~

Mycroft laid down the last page of the police report with an inward shudder that would have greatly surprised – perhaps even disturbed – those who knew him best. "Well, Inspector?"

Inspector Lestrade rubbed his forehead distractedly with a handkerchief. He'd gratefully accepted a seat, but had regretfully declined anything stronger than coffee, and was now wishing he hadn't. "It's a right mess, Mr. Holmes, I can tell you. As if it wasn't bad enough with that maniac screaming his head off in his cell day and night, now I've got Stubbs and Franklin both threatening to resign from the morgue if the... _key evidence_..." Lestrade winced; "isn't given a new home by tomorrow! Not that I can blame them," he added glumly. "How's any decent, God-fearing chap supposed to go about his normal duties with that ghastly _thud-thud_ echoing away in a jar of spirits just behind him?"

"I can only imagine," Mycroft murmured in genuine sympathy, making a mental note to arrange paid sabbaticals for the worst-traumatised Yarders. "And the victim's remaining, er, remains? Nothing is amiss with them, I gather?"

"Not _yet_," Lestrade sighed. "Preserving the poor old bugger wasn't so difficult, Stubbs tells me, him having read about what they did with Lord Nelson after Trafalgar!" The legs wouldn't have fitted in anything smaller than a barrel, anyhow. "But with all those damn doctors kicking up a fuss in the papers... Dr. Watson excepted, thank God!"

Mycroft gave him a commiserating nod. Under ordinary circumstances, a dismembered murder victim would unquestionably be regarded as Crown evidence above all other considerations. But several prominent figures in the medical community had eagerly seized upon the newspaper reports of what had been luridly branded 'The Tell-tale Heart', arguing that such a medical anomaly might save decades of cardiovascular research, and ought to be vivisected immediately. Then yet another medical faction had claimed that a still-beating heart could technically mean that the _victim_ was still alive, if only by accidental resuscitation! (Mycroft was no expert himself, but he couldn't help feeling that contemporary medicine treating the heart as the deciding organ in matters of life and death was somewhat lacking. If only a machine could be invented which registered the condition of the _brain_...) But if this was the case, the rival faction argued, then vivisecting the heart might well count as mutilation of a living body – highly illegal, not to mention unethical! And if the victim _was_ technically still alive, didn't that mean that any physician was bound by their oath to attempt to restore the 'patient' to full health? The victim's entire corpse was in the Scotland Yard morgue, albeit floating piecemeal in alcohol, and no one could say for certain any more that such life-saving surgery couldn't be performed successfully!

"And what's going to happen when those bloody quacksalvers finally admit it _can't_ be done?" Lestrade was massaging his forehead by now, feeling in strong need of a headache powder. "Are they going to let the heart keep beating, as the last remnant of a living human, or bury it with the rest of him?"

"Assuming it hasn't stopped of its own accord by then," Mycroft wryly pointed out, trying in vain not to envision either macabre possibility. At least the poor, beleaguered organ wouldn't end up in a freak museum; those were all officially closed down, thanks to the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. Nevertheless, several owners of _private_ collections had already been offering princely sums... "Oh, and talking of moral issues, I gather you're aware of the latest developments in high places, so to speak?"

"Thank you for reminding me," Lestrade answered with a grim smile. "I hear the Archbishop's now presiding over that debate in Canterbury!"

"No, I believe his Holiness has lately claimed that, er, privilege," Mycroft smiled back mirthlessly. The church had naturally waded in on the issue, blows reportedly exchanged in some dioceses over whether the heart ought to be destroyed as an abomination against nature, or preserved as a holy relic for the blessed miracle of indicting a murderer! There'd be talk of canonising its owner next...

"And God only knows how it'll all be sorted out!" Lestrade groaned. Since Her Majesty was officially the head of the Church of England as well as Parliament, the heart's fate would most likely be decided in the Crown court, but with so many influential parties taking an interest, the trial could easily drag out for months. "Oh yes, and the cell constables tell me our man's now claiming _he's_ the only one who can stop it!"

"Really? How so?"

"By hanging him." Lestrade chuckled wearily. "Well, it makes an odd sort of sense, I suppose – if the old man's heart really _did_ start beating again to avenge him, stands to reason it couldn't rest until the murderer was dead and buried!" And given the extraordinary circumstances... who could say for certain that he was wrong?

"Sadly, I doubt that... _interesting_ theory will save the poor devil from the lunatic asylum," Mycroft said slowly. "His crime was clearly the result of madness: an _id__ée fixe _exacerbated by oversensitive hearing." '_Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell...' _"No court would ever deem him fit to plead guilty. My thanks for the report, Inspector, but I fear I have taken up far too much of your valuable time."

"Not at all, Mr. Holmes." Lestrade rose and bowed. "I'll pass on your regards at Baker Street," he added innocently.

"Please do," Mycroft smiled, knowing perfectly well Lestrade would do no such thing; but Sherlock would probably deduce where he'd come from, anyhow. Heaven only knew what his fiercely rational younger brother was making of all this bother...


End file.
